LeftMNhttp://left.mn
a Minnesota website that leans leftMon, 21 May 2018 22:03:36 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.11What color are your herring?http://left.mn/2018/05/what-color-are-your-herring/
http://left.mn/2018/05/what-color-are-your-herring/#respondSun, 20 May 2018 15:30:19 +0000http://left.mn/?p=19242
The post What color are your herring? first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>Somebody might not get to see her dying mother.

An ambulance might not be able to get through.

A protester might get hurt.

These and others are all reasons supporting the Elk River Republican Nick Zerwas’ bill to treat protesters blocking freeways more harshly than other violators.

The scolds on the Strib’s editorial board are the latest to weigh in on this, urging its passage. Zerwas’ bill did pass both houses of the legislature, but the governor is poised to veto it. Good for him.

There is a thing in legal argument called the “parade of horribles.” For the most part, it is just speculation about the awful things that might happen if a court rules a certain way or a legislature passes, or doesn’t, a particular law. Usually, they are red herrings, as here. The parade of horribles is a favorite tool of editorial boards, and it is commonly employed by lawyers and editorial boards when the logical and reasonable arguments are against them. It is a non-musical form of “We’ve got trouble right here in River City.”

In other words, if somebody arguing a point starts to sound a little like Harold Hill, you should be skeptical. Even more skeptical than Marian the Librarian.

The Strib editorial board recognizes that the premise of the bill is to impose heavier penalties on protesters over ordinary scofflaws. It is the expressive purpose that is singled out for enhanced penalties. You would think that an outfit that is braying about its right to shove a camera in every defendant’s face – and probably somewhere else – in a courtroom might defend somebody else’s First Amendment rights.

But sadly, you would be wrong.

We must balance the First Amendment rights of the protesters against the rights of the public says the Strib. Remember, though, that all of the ordinary penalties against civil disobedience still apply; it is one of the reasons we pay attention to civil disobedience, as the Strib correctly recognizes. The bill doesn’t balance anything, though; it just piles on protesters.

But don’t worry, says the Strib; the enhanced penalties are a “ceiling, not a floor.” Unwittingly, the Strib has admitted that the purpose of Zerwas’ bill is to chill First Amendment expression by holding an extra club over protesters heads. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you, Editorial Board.

Thomas Haines, the most recent Spotty™ medal winner, disposed of most of the red herring arguments neatly when he observed that events and rush hour traffic clog the freeways, too. Sometimes they do it longer and better, especially if there is a snowstorm.

Attempts to criminalize expression are irresistible to those in authority who are annoyed by people who don’t agree with them. Most readers here are familiar with efforts to criminalize persons who participate in a boycott against Israel and its West Bank colonies. Here’s a graf from the ACLU blog about a recent version of the federal bill:

But this latest version would still allow people who boycott to be slapped with criminal financial penalties. It suffers from the same fundamental flaw as the original draft by criminalizing participation in constitutionally protected boycotts. In fact, the bill’s sponsors openly admit that it was designed for this purpose. In the press release accompanying its announcement, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) described the bill as an attempt to “combat Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) efforts targeting Israel.” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) also characterized the bill as “anti-BDS legislation.” Although the bill states that “[n]othing in this Act . . . shall be construed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment,” these words ring hollow in light of the bill’s obvious purpose.

Just as the Strib saying that nothing in Zerwas’s bill infringes First Amendment rights of protesters rings hollow, too.

And yes, Virginia, there really is a Senator Crapo.

Now, as I have written before, I don’t think that freeway protests are effective tactically. It would be much better to protest where it would be safer, and the protest would be seen by more people, like the Mall of America.

The post What color are your herring? first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>http://left.mn/2018/05/what-color-are-your-herring/feed/0A great Drinking Liberally program on May 17thhttp://left.mn/2018/05/great-drinking-liberally-program-may-17th/
http://left.mn/2018/05/great-drinking-liberally-program-may-17th/#respondTue, 15 May 2018 16:00:03 +0000http://left.mn/?p=19236
The post A great Drinking Liberally program on May 17th first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>Michael Brodkorb, a longtime Republican activist and former RPM officer, now a commentator, and soon to be book author (I think that about covers it) will be our guest at Drinking Liberally this week. He’ll be joined on the stage by DL’s Aaron Klemz, and they’ll talk about the upcoming party conventions and the primaries that will follow them.

There are a lot of races to talk about: governor in both parties, a senator in at least one of them, the 8th Congressional District and probably the 1st (and maybe more, who knows!), and a primary for Jason Metsa’s legislative seat in northern Minnesota. (He’s running in the 8th District primary.) And there is even an endorsement contest for state auditor in the DFL. Just as a reminder, both Arne Carlson and Mark Dayton served as state auditor before they became governor.

I have known Michael and Aaron for some years now and they are both my go-to persons for intelligent political discussion.

We meet on Thursday, May 17th at 6:00 PM at the 331 Club in Minneapolis. It’s located at 331 (get it?) 13th Avenue, N.E., more easily described as at the corner of 13th and University Avenues N.E.

The program will begin at 7:00, but come early and share a libation and some conversation. Tell your friends who might be interested.

Addendum: We learned on Tuesday afternoon that Drinking Liberally’s friend, Nick Coleman, died on Sunday night. We’ll offer a toast to his memory on Thursday.

The post A great Drinking Liberally program on May 17th first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>http://left.mn/2018/05/great-drinking-liberally-program-may-17th/feed/0Read the latest Spotty ™ winnerhttp://left.mn/2018/05/read-latest-spotty-tm-winner/
http://left.mn/2018/05/read-latest-spotty-tm-winner/#respondSat, 12 May 2018 22:30:59 +0000http://left.mn/?p=19234A man from Eden Prairie is the newest Spotty (tm) winner
The post Read the latest Spotty ™ winner first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>I really wish I had written this one; this was the letter of the day on Thursday, May 10th:

According to “House passes stronger penalty for freeway protests” (May 9), Republicans want to increase penalties for marching on freeways. They are very concerned about causing delays that have “significant consequences.” One woman missed an appointment at Mayo. Another couldn’t get to her mother’s deathbed. These, indeed, are significant consequences caused by traffic delays.

I’m assuming that, buried in the bill somewhere, is a penalty for Vikings, Twins and Gophers games that cause similar traffic problems. No? I guess our entertainment is more important than highlighting human-rights abuses. State Rep. Ilhan Omar says it well: “When you are prioritizing inconveniences over injustices, that tells us a lot.”

Thomas Haines, Eden Prairie

Although Thomas doesn’t touch on it directly, he highlights exactly why House Republican Nick Zerwas’ bill is so odious. By all appearances, Nick seems like a reasonably intelligent fellow, although he has a reckless sweet tooth. I even sent him a note last session when he first introduced this clunker trying to explain to him why it wasn’t a good idea. Alas, it was another case of pissing into the wind.

When people engage in civil disobedience, they recognize there might be a price to pay; it’s one of the reasons we pay attention to civil disobedience.

When you make civil disobedience that has an expressive intent subject to greater penalties than your average scofflaw, though, you are treading impermissibly on First Amendment territory.

I am not sure, frankly, that shutting down a freeway is the most effective protest, but it doesn’t matter. It is still singling out expressive conduct.

It is also chilling First Amendment rights, which means it is the proper subject of a federal court declarative judgment action if this sucker ever becomes law.

Remember, boys and girls, that a Spotty™ is awarded for a letter to the editor, an op-ed piece, or a blog post or comment that I wish I had written myself.

The post Read the latest Spotty ™ winner first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>http://left.mn/2018/05/read-latest-spotty-tm-winner/feed/0Did you ever have to make up your mind?http://left.mn/2018/03/ever-make-mind/
Sun, 25 Mar 2018 17:00:13 +0000http://left.mn/?p=19222We live in interesting times here in Edina, Dario, no?
The post Did you ever have to make up your mind? first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>For well over a decade, the Edina public school system has championed diversity and equity as goals in education in the district (under the guidance of, among others, Jackie Roehl, Edina’s only Education Minnesota teacher of the year). I think this is not only a moral choice, but a practical one as well, as Edina becomes an increasingly-diverse district. (And as a coda to that, a much more interesting place to live.)

But last fall, Edina’s premiere anti-public school harridan, Katherine Kersten, wrote a piece for the Center of the American Experiment – financed by people we don’t know, but who are probably from nowhere near Edina – and suddenly it is an issue in the school board election. And every yob in Edina – or Bloomington – is on board.

Now, even a Minnesota senator – from where? – Carla Nelson joins the act. (As an aside, Sen. Nelson was a big supporter of the photo ID for voters constitutional amendment in 2012 which went down about 54-46 in Edina, so we know she really has her finger on the pulse of voters here.) Nelson offered a bill to provide “academic balance” in public schools. In recent days, Rep. Sonda Erickson offered a “companion” bill in the House. Nelson’s bill passed out of the senate education policy committee; I don’t think the House bill has had a hearing yet. (It probably didn’t meet a committee hearing deadline; we’ll see whether that makes any difference.)

It is obvious almost beyond argument that the Nelson and Erickson bills are aimed at the Edina public schools, as well as any other schools that have the temerity to talk about these issues. To Katherine Kersten, Carla Nelson, Sondra Erickson, and well, Owen Michaelson, a new member of the Edina school board, too, it surely seems that teaching kids that they should treat each other with respect without regard to race, religion, or ethnicity is completely beyond the pale. It would be a shame if the kids grew up less bigoted than they are.

The bills include a requirement that school boards adopt a policy to punish teachers and staff for preaching “ideology.” What is that? Well, who knows? And that’s a big part of the point. Who really enforces the policy: the school board, the yobs, or maybe Erick Kaardal? (Google him, people; I’m not going to do it.) The potential for chilling free speech is obvious. In the 1969 case of Tinker v. Des Moines School District, the Supreme Court held that students didn’t forfeit their 1st Amendment rights when the passed through the schoolhouse door.

But Kersten, Nelson, Erickson, and Michaelson apparently think that faculty members do.

Which brings us around to the freshman representative Dario Anselmo from the A side of District 49. Most of you will recall that he ran on what a moderate he was, socially mild, in the vein of Ron Erhardt before Ron went over to the dark side. (I personally heard him say that, except for the dark side part, but that’s what he meant.) I am sure that Rep. Anselmo would love to keep his head down on this whole business.

But I am not going to let him.

I sent a note to Rep. Anselmo asking him for a conversation about this. I did tell him that as the representative for most of the school district’s real estate, that one of his jobs was to defend it. The CAE and its outside money are being very strategic here, and they picked a district where they think they can drive a wedge, especially with the CAE’s baloney “education is suffering” rhetoric.

Rep. Anselmo’s continuing silence would be the tacit adoption of the strategy. There is great potential for damage to the school system here, but it’s from the CAE and the Republicans in the legislature. I doubt that the “social moderates” that Anselmo claims are his peeps care for the brownshirt tactics.

The public school district is the most sacred institution in Edina. Far more than city government itself. And woe be unto any politician who messes with it or stands silent while outsiders try to.

So, Dario, as those great philosopher kings, The Lovin’ Spoonful, might say, sometimes you have to make up your mind.

N.B. Owen Michaelson was originally referred to as Alan Michaelson. I regret the error.

Update: Rep. Dario Anselmo is not on the House bill’s first stop, the education policy committee, but he is on the education finance committee. I recommend to all my Edina peeps that they contact Rep Anselmo and tell him to get up on his hind legs in the committee and elsewhere and oppose this clunker. Here’s how to get in touch with him: rep.dario.anselmo@house.mn. (That’s not a link, so you’ll have to copy or type it into your email client.) His House phone number is 651.296.4363.

The post Did you ever have to make up your mind? first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>Minnesota Senate District 62 Convention: Retirements, Credentials, Walkouts and Quorumshttp://left.mn/2018/03/minnesota-senate-district-62-convention-retirements-credentials-walkouts-quorums/
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 15:00:08 +0000http://left.mn/?p=19191
The post Minnesota Senate District 62 Convention: Retirements, Credentials, Walkouts and Quorums first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>As you may have heard, the Minnesota Senate District 62 Convention, which took place on Saturday March 10th, had some – let’s say – difficulties. The results of these difficulties were that the A side of the district didn’t endorse a candidate for an open House seat, and for that matter, never even completed a single round of voting. Also, and as a result, the Senate district as a whole failed to elect delegates to the state convention because of a lack of a quorum.

Having been a delegate at the convention (ward 5, precinct 8) it seemed appropriate that I try to address what happened, as best as I can piece it together.

I want to make clear right now that none of what is written below is meant to be an attack or disparagement of the people who volunteered their time to make (or try to make) this convention happen.

Retirements

In some ways the stage was set for potential chaos when both Karen Clark and Susan Allen decided to retire in the same cycle. I’m not blaming them, they have both been fantastic public servants and can retire when they choose. But the fact that both house seats would be contested, along with people wanting to get elected delegates to go to the state convention to endorse a candidate for Governor, meant there were going to be a lot of people to contend with.

Location

Even seven years after the census, most of the Senate districts in the state have roughly equal population. But Senate District 62 is the most DFL leaning district in the entire state, so the vast majority of that population is made up of DFLers. Combine the two issues above, open house seats and the Gubernatorial endorsement, with the most DFL dense Senate district in the state and that means even more people than a normal Senate district convention would expect under such circumstances.

Not only that, the actual location of the convention probably could have been worse, but certainly could have been better.

The first issue I was alerted to when arriving at the convention was a complete lack of adequate parking at the site or anywhere nearby. As the convention started and into the day there were repeated calls for people to move their illegally parked vehicles so that they wouldn’t get towed or so that other people could leave.

The other big issue was with the venue itself (Justice Page Middle School): there was one space well-suited for holding a Senate district convention of this size and one space well-suited for holding a House district endorsing convention of this size and they were the same space, the Auditorium. This meant that when the convention split into its respective house districts to endorse candidates, one of the sides would have to use – what proved to be – the totally inadequate cafeteria space.

Credentials

The two issues above combined to make the credentialing process a nightmare for everyone involved.

I arrived at the convention shortly after 9am (I tried to make it there before 9, but had to walk about 10 blocks from where I parked) and immediately had trouble finding where to go to get checked in. Eventually, I made my way to the basement where the credentialing was taking place and began waiting in line.

The way they had the basement set up was that credentialing was taking place in the gym, with lines pouring out of the gym doors, some going into the adjacent hallway, others the cafeteria.

The line I initially got into was in the cafeteria and after waiting for about 15 minutes a volunteer redirected some of us to a different line. After making it into the gym the lines were again reformed.

Finally, after waiting in line for just short of an hour, I had my credentials.

The Convention

Once the actual convention started things went about as smoothly as they could have. We made it through the first nine items on the agenda at what for a Senate district convention of this size could only be described as warp speed. Item number 10 was to separate into House districts for endorsements of candidates for the state house and that’s when the wheels fell off again.

B-side Endorsement

Things went fine on the B-side, where the endorsement for the open House seat in 62B went to three ballots, with Aisha Gomez winning.

I’m full of gratitude for everyone who has supported this campaign. I’m thrilled and carry the DFL endorsement with pride. Every candidate ran a wonderful race—I look forward to working with you all to create a more equitable Minnesota. pic.twitter.com/9dN1lT1HfI

I wasn’t involved with any of the A-side so all of my knowledge comes second hand, but from what I can gather, this is what happened. After the house split the A-side went downstairs to the cafeteria where they were supposed to hold their endorsing convention, the problem was that no one checked anyone’s credentials before they went into the cafeteria, so everyone had to leave the cafeteria and then they let everyone back in while checking their credentials.

From that point, it’s not clear to me if the endorsing convention actually officially began or not but some people thought it did and others were not so sure. Some thought there were motions being debated, others did not. In other words, confusion reigned and eventually, the volunteers walked out. Also, delegates were apparently told to go home at that point.

Suffice it to say the A-side did not endorse anyone for the House.

Quorum

It was around 6pm when the two House districts came back together to finish the Senate district business, albeit with significantly more people still around from the B side than from the A side. The first item on the reconvened Senate district agenda was the election of party officers.

The first position to be elected was Outreach Officer, but this was not necessary as two of the candidates dropped out during their speeches to endorse the other candidate. It was when the election for Treasurer happened that the first rumblings of a quorum would begin. You see, the election for Treasurer was contested, so the Senate district had to vote for a Treasurer.

After the Treasurer results were announced and while we were waiting for director candidates to give their speeches, was when the first attempt at a quorum call happened, this was at around 6:20. The first quorum motion didn’t end things though, according to the chair elections for party officers – the quorum motion was in response to the Treasurer results – did not require a quorum (or something to that effect, I didn’t hear the response from the chair in it’s entirety).

Shortly after that, when it became clear to me that yes, we were going to have to vote on 19 directors spots and I still needed to eat dinner, I left. This was around 6:45. At some point after that and before state convention delegates were selected there was a successful quorum motion and the whole thing finally came to an end.

https://twitter.com/grantgoerke/status/972663484914847744

My Quorum Hot Take

If you don’t want a quorum motion, don’t allow quorum motions.

Steve’s Quorum Not As Hot Take

If you don’t want a quorum motion being called, perhaps the convention rules, which are adopted as the first order of business at a convention, should specify that if a quorum is established that the convention may continue to conduct business if people leave.

Why yes, Paul, a Daisy air rifle, a Crossman pellet gun, a Remington single-shot .22 rifle (all of which I have owned; still own two out of three), and an AR-15 are exactly the same! Most people, including me, would not have understood that without your explanation. So thank you!

Really, though, we know that the AR-15 and its military antecedents were designed to shoot people, loads of them; experience shows they are really good at it. Tony Cornish tried to tell me once that they were sporting arms, really!

Tony, who will, now that he is out of the legislature, perhaps go back to his highest and best use: counting crappies in a bucket, was, naturally, all wet. If you need to machine gun a deer or a rabbit, you may be many things, but sportsman ain’t one of ‘em. Most of the “sportsmen” who love showing off the rapid-fire capabilities of their AR-15s on YouTube couldn’t walk a field without becoming winded or having a coronary. I despise them and have no congress with them as sportsmen.

I had occasion recently to run across the passionate defense of AR-15 rifles. The author said he particularly favored an AR-15 for shooting “varmints” on his “17-acre Texas estate.” I assume that means he has a double-wide. Okay, that was a cheap shot. I am trying to be better about this stuff, but I couldn’t resist that one. So shoot me, so to speak.

When I was a youngster, I used to hone my marksmanship skills with a Daisy air rifle shooting rats at the local landfill, which we called the “town dump.” There was an inexhaustible supply of rats. Now, the rats were vermin, not mere “varmints.” It wasn’t an especially edifying experience, but I felt it was a public service in kind of an adolescent way. True, I didn’t vaporize any rats, but I can assure you they didn’t see any difference.

I also spent many falls and winters of my youth walking the river bottom hunting small game with a .22 rifle.

The idea that you need a military rifle for tasks like this is ludicrous. And offensive.

People like Paul Gazelka have been so infected by the NRA and other gun-rights groups DNA that there no hope for them. The only thing we can do is divest Gazelka of his Senate leadership post. We probably can’t do that for a couple of years, but we ought to see what we can do with his sidekick, Kurt Daudt, in November. Oh, and let’s not forget Rep. Brian Johnson, the Cambridge Republican replacing Tony Cornish as House Public Safety chair. He said he doesn’t want to push forward anything that might violate the Second Amendment. Assault weapons bans, waiting periods, universal background checks, red flag laws, etc., and etc., are all clearly constitutional even under the Heller decision.

Guys like Gazelka, Daudt, and Johnson don’t really believe something like Parkland will happen in their hometown, but it surely might, more likely in fact, than in the ‘hood, if you look at the demographics of the shooters.

The post A rifle is a rifle, and a minnow and a shark are both fish first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>There are no Caesar’s wiveshttp://left.mn/2018/02/no-caesars-wives/
Thu, 22 Feb 2018 18:00:02 +0000http://left.mn/?p=19181
The post There are no Caesar’s wives first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>In the wake of the Florida school shooting last week, the subject of gun control has appropriately and perhaps finally, animated political discussions around the country, including in the Minnesota governor’s race. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll be young people – Millennials are now the biggest voter cohort – who will lead the way on public opinion, just as they did on GLBT issues. We just have to get them to the polls. Kidding. Sort of.

Other than an unseemly lust for craft beer, I am with the Millennials. Again, kidding, I like craft beer, too.

Congressman Tim Walz will be our guest at Drinking Liberally on March 8th, and if I was a betting man – and I am – I think that Rep. Tina Liebling will be at Drinking Liberally on either March 15th or the 22nd. So trackers, mark your calendars.

“Evolving,” in political terms, means you wet your finger, stuck it up, and you can see which way the wind blows. It isn’t entirely unpejorative. In some ways, the congressman is easy to beat up on this issue, and Rep. Murphy has. But without meaning to take sides, there is something else that you need to consider. And it’s a little inside baseball, so you need to stick with me.

In the 2012 election, a miraculous thing happened. Both houses of the legislature turned over from Republican control to DFL control. Personally, I attribute this to the titanic efforts marshaled (by my friend Carolyn Jackson and others) to defeat the amendments for the gay marriage ban and the photo ID requirement for voters proposed by the Republicans and the turnout that came out to defeat the amendments.

Consequently, in 2013 and 2014 legislative sessions, the DFL had the whole table: the House, the Senate, and the Governor.

But somehow, and inexplicably (not so inexplicably, as we’ll see in a moment), on campaign finance disclosure, they screwed it up. Let me tell you how. I almost still can’t believe it.

You all, or most of you, anyway, remember the decision in Citizens United that permitted corporations and nonprofits to make contributions for messaging in political campaigns. In his opinion, Justice Kennedy said we should not worry about these contributions because laws existed or would be passed to expose the contributors of such communications so that voters would know their identity. For the most part, naturally, they didn’t exist.

The DFL moved election bills in 2013 that included “electioneering and disclosure” language. The language survived in the final Senate bill, but the language included in the House bill by then Rep. Ryan Winkler was stripped out. (Longtime readers here may recall that I’ve written before that the “electioneering and disclosure” language was in both final bills, but it wasn’t in the House bill; that according to the Revisor’s Office.)

In other words, the House leadership team of Speaker Paul Thissen and Majority Leader Erin Murphy, could not hold their caucus together and keep this important language in the bill. It didn’t come back in the conference committee, either. One of the members of the conference committee, by the way, was new Majority Leader Kurt Daudt. He wouldn’t really become the Majority Leader until after the election in 2014, but I think he was really elected on the day of the conference committee vote.

Ol’ Kurt was practically licking his chops during the brief committee hearing (taking only long enough to drop off the still-copier-warm copies of the conference report bill – without the electioneering and disclosure language). He knew that the Ben Golnik’s Minnesota Jobs Coalition and Norm Coleman’s Minnesota Action Network were gearing up to facilitate anonymous smear jobs on DFL politicians across the state. The Jobs Coalition and Action Network, and now others, traffic in anonymity and a lack of transparency because the legislature couldn’t get this done.

The session in 2013 was the high point in getting electioneering and disclosure provisions into the law. We all know what dark money s**t shows the 2014 and 2016 cycles were like. The current one won’t be better.

It is open knowledge that it was the MCCL and gun interests that submarined this important legislation. But it was DFL leadership, including House leadership, that failed to keep it from happening.

There are no Caesar’s wives on gun issues here.

The current regime on gun regulation – or lack of it that we have – is explained as much by the political and legislative precursor chemicals as anything. It is important to ask the candidates what they intend to do about the political system that has presented us with what we’ve currently got.

The post There are no Caesar’s wives first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>Eat your veggies; it’s good for the earthhttp://left.mn/2018/02/eat-veggies-good-earth/
Mon, 19 Feb 2018 19:00:06 +0000http://left.mn/?p=19176
The post Eat your veggies; it’s good for the earth first appeared on LeftMN.
]]>How your diet affects the Earth, an article in the Sunday, January 14th, StarTrib describes the results of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the United States of America (PNAS) on December 19, 2017. In general, the environmental impact of one’s diet has not been considered when governments establish dietary guidelines. This study was conducted to address these environmental impacts, as stated in the abstract.

Dietary choices drive both health and environmental outcomes. Information on diets come from many sources, with nationally recommended diets (NRDs) by governmental or similar advisory bodies the most authoritative. Little or no attention is placed on the environmental impacts within NRDs. Here we quantify the impact of nation-specific NRDs, compared with an average diet in 37 nations, representing 64% of global population.

The article in the Star Tribune, How your diet affects the Earth, explains how the study was conducted by Paul Behrens, an environmental scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who led the work.

To come to this conclusion, Behrens turned to Exiobase, a massive input-output database that represents the entire world economy. It allowed him to track not only the environmental cost of growing and raising the various types of food we consume, but also the cost of the machinery involved in the production of that food, and the cost of getting it into our supermarkets and eventually onto our plates.

What is the driving force behind these reductions?

The results were far from uniform, but in broad strokes, he found that the wealthiest countries would lower their environmental impact if their citizens followed nationally recommended diets, primarily because most of these recommendations call for a significant reduction in the amount of meat citizens consume.

“In general, meat is worse than other types of food because every time something eats something else, you get a loss of energy,” Behrens said. “Eating any animal is going to have more of an impact compared to other food groups.”

If you want to try plant-based meals, but just say no to tofu and other “meats”, there’s some good news on the local scene. The MspSt.Paul magazine’s FOODIE blog says it all:

If you haven’t heard about it yet, the Impossible Burger is a burger patty made entirely from plant-based ingredients, no meat or animal products, that has captured the fascination of big name chefs like David Chang, Michael Symon, and Traci Des Jardins, because it “bleeds” like beef. The main difference between this burger and the standard black-bean-quinoa mashup veggie burger is: science.

One of the original founders, good ol’ Owatonna native and former General Mills guy Nick Halla told me, “The whole point of the company is to reduce the harmful impact of the beef industry on the environment, but the goal is to do that with a delicious burger.” Through engineering and science, they’ve come up with a patty that sears like beef, looks like beef, juices/bleeds like beef, and yes, brings the flavors like beef.

The Impossible Foods website, (Find Me. Bite Me.) lists six locations (four in Minneapolis, one in Hopkins, and one in Roseville) where you get an impossible burger in Minnesota. Here’s an opportunity to do something good for your health and for the planet. As Paul Behrens states in How your diet affects the Earth:

The campaigns that Ron refers to were the successful efforts to defeat the gay marriage and voter photo ID amendments proposed in 2012. Carolyn was the legislative coordinator for the ACLU-MN and a leader in both campaigns.